Last legs

It’s a good time to take stock:  on the day when two marathons close to my heart (and in the case of Zurich, close to my home) take place, and a week after so many good friends of this website admirably complete marathons in Brighton and Rotterdam.

My last run ended so miserably that I couldn’t immediately bring myself to talk about it here. It happened six weeks ago, just days after the last, generally optimistic, post in which I was up and out at sunrise, and looking forward to easing my way into training for a late-May half marathon. In that message, I casually referred to a distant twinge in my left calf — the one that has treated me so grievously since Hyde Park on the first day of 2010.

What was so crushing about the calf pain that occurred three days after that entry, was not that the seizure was real rather than merely sniffed, but that it hit my RIGHT calf, and not the left. It was the first time in 15 months of calf aggravation that my right leg had cried out. I walk-hopped back up the hill to the apartment in a state of deep despondency — certain I would never run again. What was left of my ego hit the buffers that morning, as I realised there would be nothing to look forward to for the rest of my life beyond sitting in an armchair, generous glass of decent wine in hand, watching QPR in the Premier League on television.

Armchair, you say? Football? Decent wine?

Hmm. I see…

Er, admittedly, the weak-minded may find some appeal in this combination, but let me assure you that some of us have stouter hearts and a greater sense of integrity than that.

It would be a pathetic way to fizzle out. Let’s regroup, yet again, and have another bloody go.

The Rotterdam exploits of Julie, and the race reports of Dan and Fran from Brighton were a tremendous reminder of how things once were for me, and could and should be again. If their achievements helped to set the fantasy marathon ball rolling once again, the happy arrival of the London and Zurich marathons just one week later, have helped to channel a bit of cement around the idea that all is not yet lost.

The town isn’t mentioned in my 2006 Zurich race report, but let me tell you something about my previous experience of Horgen.

The interweaving of competing realities is a comfortable old theme of this blog. I remember in Copenhagen, the day before the marathon (http://runningcommentary.net/?p=1002333) watching  a live interview on the TV news, and then casually looking out of the hotel window, and seeing the interview take place on the opposite street corner. Strangers talking to me about things they’ve read on this website, which always gives me a slightly uncomfortable existential shiver — or am I imagining that? And then we have the pleasing idea of being knocked down by an ambulance, and the small-town Swiss habit of eateries closing for lunch. And there’s the old joke where the doctor says to a patient, “I’ve not seen you recently”, to which the patient (of course) replies “No, I’ve been ill.”

These Escher-like conundrums amuse and interest me. Which isn’t much to do with our pre-marathon coach tour of Zurich in 2006. But anyway.

After being taken around the city in the company of a huge Cuban family, the bus took us up to what I now know to be Uetliberg, the cable-car-served little mountain just outside Zurich. We then continued down the long south-west side of the lake. I’d chosen this tour because it passed through Meilen, roughly the halfway point of the next day’s marathon, and continued along the race route all the way back to the city. It always helps to see what you’re about to get, as generations of actresses have confided to senior clergymen.

From Uetliberg, we drove a few kilometres along the A3 motorway before dipping down into Horgen, the small town where we were to connect with the ferry that would take us across the lake to Meilen. After a couple of days in the big city, it was our first opportunity to see suburban Switzerland. As the coach wound its way down through Zugerstrasse, the main street, to the ferry quay, I remember thinking that Horgen seemed like a very pleasant town. From the main drag, there were glimpses of cobbled streets and olde-worlde shoppen. I remember only one detail: a bus stop near the top of town, where a laughing woman with a large bag of groceries was struggling to control two boisterous young girls. I recall turning to M and saying: “Nice to see some real people doing ordinary things.”

How could I have known that 5 years later, to the day, as a resident of the town, I’d find myself at that same bus stop, waiting for the 08:10 to take me to the bahnhof, and into Zurich for my German class?

Life. Bloody hell.

This morning I slept in a bit later than intended, which solved the problem of which option to take. Had I emerged a little earlier, I could have walked down to that very same ferry quay, and been in Meilen 10 minutes later, from where I could watch the first of the marathon runners come through the town and double-back on themselves for the long pull back to Zurich.

Instead, I was able to take option two, which was to watch the start of the London Marathon on TV here (we get UK TV, but the race was also being covered live on Swiss and German channels), before taking my mug of coffee out to the balcony from where, with the help of my binoculars, I could watch the Zurich Marathon runners on Seestrasse, the lakeside road, approaching Meilen, on the other side of the water. Given that the town is the half-way point, where they double-back on themselves, I was able to see the runners travelling in both directions along the same stretch of road. It gave the proceedings a rather un-Swisslike air of chaos.

But what a day for it. Zurich 2006 was a freezing downpour from start to grinding finish. The lake was a menacing, choppy, dismal grey. The mountains were hidden by curtains of dense battleship-hued cloud. But today? Today was a continuation of the last few weeks. We’ve had an unusually warm and sunny winter’s end. Indeed, the winter I’d feared seemed to last just a few weeks, and the snow and low-rolling lake mists made even those few weeks pretty special. Today was a day to watch a marathon, but not to run one.

I took a slug of coffee, and felt myself grinning. I loved the metaphorical value of the experience. I used to run marathons; now I watch them from afar, through binoculars. Will I ever run a marathon again? Probably not, but this is no longer the ambition. All I want to do is to be able to take part in a running race — any running race. A 5 kilometre village fun run would do me very nicely.

So. Where to from here? My best route would seem to be the gym, and a pretty severe rethink of my diet. CH has two deadly ‘ch’ foods – cheese and chocolate, that I need to control. More than control – remove. For the sake of this limp bit of wordsmithery, I’ll stretch the CH border to include Chianti, or at least Italian wine in general, which I’ve always had an affection for, and which is widely available here at a good price.

Getting into the gym groove seems to be the key. If I can revive that habit, what I stuff into my mouth will take care of itself. I’ve already investigated all the local options, and none is perfect. There’s Bodycult, the gym at the top end of town — reasonably priced, and with spinning classes, but a little bit grim. (The fact that a Google search saw them listed on a gay website is nothing to do with it.). There’s Activ-Fitness — even more reasonably priced, but with no spinning classes; and the Waedenswil gyms with outdoor spinning, but just  a little too far away. And then there’s the palatial Holmes Place in Oberrieden, on the border with Horgen, down on the lake front. It offers spinning, free towels, and more yummy mummies than one man can could reasonably cope with. But it’s also a whopping 1700 CHF a year, or roughly £100 a month.

In a moment of divine intervention, Groupon has delivered 10 cheap entries to Holmes Place, which I’ll use with enthusiasm, starting on Tuesday evening. If I like the place, I’ll embark on some aggressive price negotiation, and see how far I get.